State Voices

I carried this childcare bill in the Senate. [Representative] Jehan [Gordon-Booth] had it in the House. We tag-teamed this. We negotiated together. It was intense and hard and all the rest of that stuff. And her daughter, Jianna, …was maybe three. And so we had her in the capitol. And so here I am babysitting Jianna in the Senate chamber because her mother is running a childcare bill and doesn’t have childcare. There’s no daycare center in the capitol. …There are close places, [but]…does it make it easy for young women who are having babies to actually hold office?"

I don’t think there’s any bias against women…I believe that that the tide [has] turned dramatically to accepting that women are a vital part of the political process and they need to be included."

I go into rooms and I have conversations with people where they say, ‘Yeah, Oklahoma’s not ready for a woman in that role.’ …That’s still being said in 2021 and that’s being said to me, as the leader of this party. …So I don’t know what they’re saying, when I’m not around, to a candidate who thinks that they might want to run. …It’s absolutely coming from our donor class…and you can’t minimize the importance of our donor base."

I believe [power is held in] elected positions because that’s where you can affect change. And right now, with [Democrats] being in such a superminority, you can yell all you want but it doesn’t affect the vote on the floor, and the vote on the floor is what makes it into a law. [Interview conducted in November 2021.]"

You have to be in the room where the decisions are made."

I definitely think that the elected Democratic leaders who are running the caucuses and their members who are involved in decision-making, they all want obviously to win the chamber – whether it’s the House or the Senate – and they all want the best candidates. And luckily I think that we’re seeing that women were resonating with voters."

While I believe that the political parties are doing what they believe best to diversify their parties, …I think [the whole political ecosystem does] suffer from…this belief that the Pennsylvania voters at large are more conservative and, therefore, have certain expectations about what a statewide executive candidate may sound like, look like, believe in. …[There are] just some implicit biases that are coming out in how donors [and] parties are perceiving who’s electable and who’s not and for what reasons are they electable and not."

I think that there is so much systemic misogyny in a state like Georgia, and it’s almost cloaked in civility but it’s still misogynistic. And that permeates southern culture. This old school misogyny…I think that is a barrier to Republican and Democratic women, and at every level. …They don’t see them as deserving a place at the table."

Anytime you have a statewide election, there’s a lot of jockeying up and down the ballot for people running for Congress, people running for statewide higher office. And so all of those vacancies where we elected new women in 2017 were vacancies created when people resigned from the legislature to run for higher office."